Poylsyllabic
by Senri
Summary: A series of Young Wizard drabbles and short fics. Number seven: Joanne/Nita pre-femslash, for Yuletide 2007. Don't like, don't read; you were warned.
1. Halfway

_"You are smart for a mortal sometimes. It's a real pity you won't see things my way: We could do well together."  
_  
The Lone Power, Wizard's Holiday

Everything hurt, and Nita couldn't think well enough to cast a healing spell.

Instead she sat with her mutilated arm flopped by her side, head listing over. It hurt to think, it hurt to look at her tattered arm, it hurt to look at the pages of her manual, soaked and purplish with blood. Her hand was crimped and useless by her side, all the bones splintered into mush. If she could think straight she could cast a healing spell. If she couldn't manage to cast one she might bleed to death and die. Her mind, instead of focusing on anything useful, like the syllables she needed, went around and around like a record, sticking in the same spot. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. She didn't even doubt it anymore.

Her head fell gently to the side, dark hair cascading over one shoulder. She couldn't control her body very well in the face of the overwhelming pain. Spit slipped past her lower lip. Her legs were shaking, her whole body shaking. It was so cold.

She did not react to the patent leather shoes that came into her vision. At the point where she was, tipping on the edge of death, she was not entirely sure they were even there; the sheer normalcy of their appearance made them surreal. Shiny black leather. She could smell the polish.

Half numb, she tipped her head slowly upwards. When she saw who it was she closed her eyes and a small shudder ran through her. Her ruined hand fumbled at the pages of her manual. The Lone Power watched her with heavy-lidded, humorous eyes. He was smacking a black metal rod into his palm, over and over again, gently. The air around it crawled with shadows.

"Ah," He sighed. "You, again."

He looked very quickly at the creature that lay beside her, sprawled in the center of a sticky puddle of blood, and did not comment. She knew the thought already: _Ah. Another thing ruined_. When He folded to a crouch before her, she expected pain, and got it when he touched her gently, laying cold white fingers across her hand. It wasn't just her own ruined body that hurt her, it was the way His matter stung hers; the way she could feel the consuming death that lay just under His skin. It was very close to the surface, sucking at her hungrily.

He ran His fingers up her arm, across her shoulder, to brush gently at her face. She could feel the trail of burning His touch left, like pushing ice too long against her skin. When He cupped his hand around the back of her head and drew her closer she cringed. The puff of air He blew across her forehead was almost worse than instant death would have been. She hardly felt the brush of dry lips across her brow; they felt like moth's wings.

"No," He said, with no compassion. "You won't die here today."

He crushed her face against the silky material of His jacket. She could hardly breathe. "Not today. Your partner will find you, take you and make you safe. I'll let you go today. But have a care, won't you... don't become boring."

Kit came to her a few minutes later, and ran to her, his sweatshirt splattered with blood, his face gone waxy pale with worry. Even when he had healed her arm and held her close to his shoulder, she couldn't stop crying; she knew that he had been led; she knew that she wouldn't be allowed to die so easily.

END

May 13, 2005


	2. Hush

When Daryl was a baby, he took colic and bawled for ages. It was a thin, piercing, impossible-to-ignore wail. His mother took him in her soft arms and rocked him and kissed his wrinkled forehead.

"_Hush_," she whispered to him.

* * *

Nita rolled herself under his covers, pressed one knuckle against her splitting lips, and slept for thirteen hours. His pillow was specked with copper dots of blood after she left. Daryl turned off his lamp when he saw her, and went quietly downstairs to get milk. He wondered if she would tell him why she was there when she woke up. He wondered where Kit was.

He turned off the radio downstairs and sat down with his drink to think.

* * *

Sisters were nice to have around, Daryl thought, drinking cocoa that Carmela had pressed upon him. It was hot and thick and good and awakened a persistent burning on his tongue. It made his nose run a little. He would have liked to have a sister. Someone who was always there, an automatic friend; he couldn't decide whether he wanted one more like Dairine or more like Carmela, so he would settle for one who was like both.

* * *

Everything Kit touches is left with residue of his magic. It_sticks_. Kit's almost a full-grown wizard, his power levels are consistent; it shouldn't show that much. Yet it does. The moon rocks chatter where he's been. Those carved with faces are even more human; they whisper slow stories of age and cold starlight. Kit is old in a way that not even Nita has, and his hands are warm and smooth with oil and healing. The ties between Kit and Nita glow with strength- they've been pushed and torn at but never broken.

Nita tears furrows in her skin and screams until her throat ruptures when he dies. No one else can take his place; the pain cannot be eased.

* * *

The three of them absorbed Daryl into their friendship easily- fiery Dairine, easygoing Kit, clever Nita. He wonders sometimes if he's upset the balance; a tripod is one of the most stable shapes in nature, and he's added a fourth leg. But then Nita smiles at him, Dairine makes a witty, barbed remark, Kit throws back his head and laughs really loudly and openly, and he loves them so so much that it hurts, these fellow wizards, these instruments of his freedom. These people who cared about him before they knew him. He loves them in a way he loves no one else; they are the siblings of his deepest soul, they brothers and sisters his parents never had. Even when he goes out farther, sees more of the world that wizardry has given him, they are still the ones he comes home to.

* * *

The Lone Power gives him the most unspeakable smile and takes his hands. So gently. Daryl ignites, instantly; goodness touching its antithesis, matter touching antimatter and giving energy but not_exploding_. Trying to. He can feel his cells shriveling. The brush of a kiss flares feather-light across his brow and Daryl is beyond anything but memory. Nita crying into toast and scrambled eggs. Kit, going faster than he should, going farther than he _can_. They always wanted to go together, didn't they? They'd agreed on it once. Dairine holding a ruptured metal shell (that was once _alive_, once a _being_, once a _friend_) close, with rage eating her eyes alive.

Loving them hurts so much now. It feels as though his heart will burst; throbbing, throbbing, it will fill with hot air and lift him far away from everything. Daryl has never had a problem with doing the right thing; uncertainty has never slowed him for long. He can feel his intent, the _properness_ of it, crisping his skin. Bubbles popping up and filling with fluid to make blisters like fat in a frying pan kind of and how is he ever going to heal from this how will he ever last Powers _how_-

Only that isn't important now.

The Lone Power is screaming too, high and inhuman. Miserable thing that it is.

Daryl props his forehead on Its melting shoulder. They are mixing up, blending together. It's human form is pulsing, warping, distorted by the ugly crazy inside things that are trying to get _out_.

That can't happen. That's what Daryl's here to stop.

He whispers "_hush_" and reaches deep, for the white-hot energy inside.

END

9/12/05

_Edited _9/13/05.


	3. Promised a Brother

When you get on the train to head to work, you don't expect to end up standing next to someone who will become the most important person in your life.

Tom was just going to his job at the bookstore. Carl was headed for the library. Two male students, about the same height, darkhaired, both of them students at the University of New York. Both of them wizards.

At the moment, it was all that connected them. As yet, neither knew the other's name.

Consider Tom Swale: he has a family tradition of wizardry. His father was a wizard, and before him his grandmother; when he came of age at fourteen and undertook the Ordeal he came into his heritage gifted with power, will, and a bird already strange from living with three generations of wizards.

They converse often: a slightly haggard college student still living with his parents and the resplendent rainbow macaw who has chosen him (because Peach is old and _instensely_ magical, and is not to be made to do things she doesn't care to do). They talk about family and being magic workers and the likelihood of Tom's dying tomorrow on a mission against the Lone Power, like his grandmother did many years before. They share an apple: tart and crisp. Wizards do not need to eat spotty, bruised grocery produce unless they want to.

"Family doesn't mean _blood_," Peach tells him, on one of her obscure conversational tangents. She holds the half-apple up with one claw and slices shards of white flesh away, swallowing them whole. "You don't need to even know someone to be part of their family, especially now, as a wizard. You're part of a brotherhood of thousands. Most of them don't even know you, and will never meet you, and would never know if you died, but they will _care_ for you when it counts because you're a wizard and that _means_ something."

His father had come home from an assignment last night, with weary lines in his face and a washed-out look in his eyes. He moved slowly this morning, taking his time over coffee and bacon and eggs. Tom thinks he might have brainburn. "Blood is still important," he says to Peach. "It's more than just being part of a group- it's being there, ready to support you, someone who would give themselves to help you..."

Peach would probably snort, if she could. "And you think that other wizards wouldn't do that? You would have a legion of family, if you knew where to look for it. You never need to be alone. In fact," the soft white skin around her small eye wrinkles wickedly. "I challenge that you'll find a brother in the faith, one to make you know what _brotherhood_ really means, and you'll give your life for his and he'll give his life for you and in the end you can both have faith..."

It has the feel of a prophecy. On Tom's arms goosebumps rise. He is thinking about this on the train, wondering when the story will unfold.

Tom and Carl both get off on the same stop. They look past each other and away.

Carl came late to his wizardry, and is the only one in his family that he knows of to have the knack. On assignment he rides a certain mad knife-edge of terror, because he knows there is so much that he does not know. He expects impending doom, and scrapes out of it each time. There is so much he wants to learn about the world, about wizardry, about _being himself_ that he is desperate not to die before he learns a little more. Timeheart or no; it just wouldn't be the same.

The day he meets Tom he is riding on the jagged edge of death, running low on power and blasting away wyvrens with the few drabs of power he has left. Time is going wonky in the world around him, and the fight jump and skips from moment to moment; the fighters hang for five minutes still in the air and jump ahead like skipping along a video, jump jump jump. It's impossible to keep everything straight. Beads of blood are dripping from his fingers, making splatterart on the rocky ground. He spins madly to keep the screaming ugly monsters that are closing in around him away. It is a bluff and he thinks that he is going to fail, and he wants to weep because this is his fifth _big_ assignment, because he still thinks of them as big and small yet, and he is going to die on it, and all the other differences he could have made are going to be gone.

And then _something_ happens, and three of the fat, stinking bodies around him flicker and are then _gone_, _SNAP_. It takes a few minutes for the rest of the ugly creatures to realize that three fellows are dead, and that reinforcements for the wizard have come in, and that they'd better get themselves gone right _now_ unless they want to follow their friends, and then they are gone. Except for the two that got killed while they were mulling it over.

Carl pushes his bloody hand into his side and looks at the person who saved him.

Someone about as tall as he is, dusty, blood-smeared. Someone with, incongruously, a bird on his shoulder; a large and cranky and brightly-colored bird that is ruffling it's feathers and muttering to itself. Carl wipes sweat off his forehead (this results in a long smear of blood over his face, and an even more disheveled appearance. He does not bother fussing over it). Instead he goes to shake hands.

"_Dai_, cousin," he greets, noticing the slight flinch of surprise the other has at the greeting. "The name's Carl Romeo. You?"

"_Dai_," the other responds, perfectly polite (but there _was_ that moment of surprise, how strange). "I'm Tom Swale, the bird's Macchu Picchu, call her Peach if that's too long."

The are of the same height, and Carl forgets his wound and shakes hands with the bloody one. He had tripped and caught himself, and torn a line across his palm, and not bothered to stop and heal it because at that point he was running for his life. When they release hands it is actually five minutes later because time has done a little jump again. Tom's palm is red and sticky too. Carl notices. "Oh damn, I'm sorry, I think that's my fault.."

"No, it's fine," Tom stops him, smiling wryly, and turns his hand to expose another jagged wound following the thick pad of muscle at the base of his thumb. "I tripped."

They've shaken hands and traded blood- so they're blood brothers now. "Really?" Carl laughs, slightly hysterical. He hasn't eaten in six hours (longer counting time stops) and he's been on the run the whole time. "I did too. This place is hell, huh? Wanna stick together?"

Tom doesn't look certain. He might be starting to refuse when the bird on his shoulder ruffles her feathers and says in a high and somewhat crotchety voice, "Two heads will be better than one on this. Don't be pigheaded, Swale!"

As it turns out, they complete the assignment together, and are even kind of friends by the end of it. At the end of the year they've saved each others lives three times.

END

8-16-05


	4. Revolving Under Angels

_Once I whirled alone with the stars. Receding and drawing in, again and again unto infinity- drawing close to the light and retreating again, running my own path amongst the flaming angels that surrounded me. Watching the wax and wane of races, watching the stars flare in their own solitary communions. Running close to the sun, and turning away from it again. Year upon year upon year._

_This was all a long time ago._

…

_The people come, now and again, whirling in their own small flames. Flicking past, almost too fast to follow. It is impossible to focus on their tiny lives, their fleeting moments, when one is accustomed to watching the private lives of stars._

_Sometimes they lay their hands upon my surface, warmth against the old old cool touch of stone. I can feel the rush of blood through hot palms. They brush the surface of my age and then go. They do not look deeply. Those who look deeply are rare, and often once they look they retreat, and do not try again. The small lives of humans are torn asunder when compared to the great weight that is my age._

_Flares of light, heat, gas, metal surrounding me as I turn with my fellows… faster than anything, older than any human. A long time ago I twirled like a Dervish with the gods. Watching stars grow and die. Watching the years pass. I. I. The sun. The race. Emptiness._

…

_Sometimes, the deeper-looking ones come back. Rarely, they come back, and look again. They ask for stories of the pass… of years… through emptiness. They ask for stories of eternity. _

_Sometimes, often, one comes close again. A bright flame, a bright tongue of strength. Curling tiny hands against stone and putting forehead against stone and letting tiny drops of moisture drop against stone. Against I. _

_**My mother is gone**, the flame tells me. Wetness slides down my surface. Dry for so long. It has been years since the sky opened and let liquid fall against my back. **My mother has gone away. There was nothing I could do to stop it.**_

_Liquid falls. It is bitter, bitter, imbued with salt. I can sense that. **My mother died, and my sister let her go and couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything. I should have been strong enough, shouldn't I? I should have been able to do something…**_

…

…_**once, I opened a gate to the heart of a star.**_

_The heart, the heart. The heart of a star was never mine to see._

_I saw them only from distance, I tell her, the yearning fire that leans against me. I turned around them once. The sun, the sun was all that held me. The sun. The sun and I have not spoken for many years. Once, I raced across emptiness…_

…_what…_

_what is…_

_mother?_

_Silence. The touch of flame. So close to sunlight. I miss freedom, I miss the emptiness, I miss the range that I followed. I miss the rush of fire through space._

_**I miss my mother,** the flame tells me. She has a small frame, one that radiates power like sunlight. The sun was my only lord. The sun was all that held me._

_**Once, I could have done something for her. What should I have done?**_

_The bitterness of moisture against me. The wet that drops from the eyes again. Mother, mother, mother, she says. I do not know of any mother._

_Once, I fled from light and was drawn to it. Once, the sun was my only lord._

_**What should I have done?**_

END

June 13, 2005.

Yeah, I know… weird and most likely incomprehensible. Ah well, such is life I suppose…

If you're wondering who the narrator was, refer to the beginning of High Wizardry. Obvious hint: Kit talks with it.


	5. In Remembrance Of

Moon on city neighborhood. Breeze talking through silver leaves. Sounds plain? Maybe, but I assure you it's as/more beautiful (and more gentle) than anything you've seen of late.

Rowan tree. The berries flushed bright lipstick-red, leaves flashing silver mirror bellies towards the moon - Rowan's a moon-tree anyway, a special one. It knows its name well. Thus: a friend to wizards, who strain themselves often in naming things, and so are grateful when something knows itself well.

So: the Rowan, under the moon, standing tall, trunk flaring as it approaches ground - like the hips of a woman. Smooth bark and the soft susurrus-sigh of leaves. The earth is raked neatly around curling roots - and the roots curl, neatly, around a girl, pale in the moonlight, face opening like night-blooming flower up towards the stars. Late enough so that, metronomic, her chin dips towards her chest in heart's rhythm. Her hands on her knees, palms up, like flowers too - orchids, with thin filament-petals. Wizard's blood thump-thumping tribal drum style in the hollow of her throat, in her wrists. That's why she's out here, of course: soaking up the holy moon-light, and paying her respects to the stars and the tree. Meditating like she's on consecrated ground - which this now is - wizard's home where great works are done.

_It crumbled to ash_, she says, in the language of trees - speaking with the soft sigh of breathe, the way her soot-dark lashes brush her cheeks. How lovely, how subtle, how sad. _I'm sorry. It was really beautiful. It was so helpful. But it got burned out - I'm sorry._

_Don't worry,_ the tree - speaking soft like a mother. _It's all right. There's more where that came from - I have branches to spare - but you... and your star..._

The moon shines, a pearl button sewn into the black satin sky. Is there still an aurora? The pop of radiation on skin? Can it still be felt? Is it really gone forever?

The face falls into the hands (flower closes) - and is there crying? No. That's done, and done and done, and Nita is still aching, but she can't cry anymore. Instead she just pinches at the bridge of her nose. Remembering.

_I'll miss him._

_Ah..._ says the Rowan, sighing. _I understand. He is not lost to you forever._

But the night is so huge, colored sulfur by streetlights and - it seems - so empty... and how can she possibly forget him? She talked to a star, hot, salt-white, laughing, _her friend_. Called by a stupid kiddy earth name because they couldn't manage the long one... _her friend_.

Without thinking, she asks, _will it always be this way? Will it always hurt this much? I don't..._

_You need not do this,_ the Rowan says gently, _if it pains you so unbearably._

And there is that choice, isn't there?

But the thought - the very thought of abandoning this new world, of stars, of trees, of magic and danger, that colors the world more vivid, that calls to something hot in the back of her mind that wants to rise to the occasion... how can this be abandoned?

The fire of the forge was hot - too hot to waste. She is fuel, now, for this new destiny, and even if she burns up in wizardry...

_No._

She's done something.

_I can't give this up now._

_Grieve,_ Liused says, _And do not forget. And your friend will be grateful._

The moon is white as salt and high, high in the sky - round and open, bright enough to read by (this - from experience). An open eye to another world. Nita knows the taste of moon dust now, and the taste of her own tears - and does not find them sweet enough to weep forever. The night is sweeping the dusty world and all she knows is that she has friends that she must not forget to love.

END

6-28-06


	6. Bringing a Lady Flowers

It was only noon and the light was already thin and tired. It had to ooze down through a heavy cloud cover and stuff itself into the crannies under eaves and porches. Spring was the season of waking, where the earth kicked off the blanket of snow and began to work itself up to summer's frenetic burst of energy, but this was a day where it seemed to feel more like going back to sleep instead: everything was slow and slightly blurry, seen through thick glass lenses by someone with a mind strung out on exhaustion.

Purple hyacinths spilled from her hands. Nita looked down at them and felt distantly sorry, because her fingers were getting all along them and shredding the thin purple petals into a zillion pieces. They were as soft and fine as silk, and wilting under her rough calloused palms. Flowers: it was kind of a horrible idea for a wizard to give flowers to the dead, wasn't it? It would have been better to set the plant into the earth, push energy into it and let it grow. Instead they were dead.

It was just poor taste.

The coffin was swallowed, under the dark earth. Nita mashed the flowers against her itchy black sweater and didn't let them go, even as the stems bruised dark dark green.

Afterwards, there were refreshments.

Little hot dogs, casseroles, cake with black frosting. Nita was suddenly very hungry, and she mashed it all together onto a limpish paper plate and sat in a folding chair and tried not to dump it all in her lap. She clutched the bouquet between her knees and sawed at a leathery piece of beef with a plastic knife. Peas and ranch dressing slopped off the curled corner of the plate and onto her long black skirt. She wiped at it with a napkin and kept eating.

Dairine sat nearby, picking at a piece of bread. She had a bruised, hollow look under her large eyes; the black clothing washed her out terribly. "How can you eat all that?" she asked Nita. The older wizard stared down into the stew of various foods on her plate and dragged the fork around in them without responding. Dairine leaned against her older sister and, after a few minutes, began a low, snuffling series of sobs. Awkwardly Nita folded the plate in half in her hands, then folded that into quarters. The flowers were sticky with salad dressing. Eventually Dairine stopped crying, and just let her sticky face rest against her sister's shoulder. She looked even more terrible after crying, with her nose pinkish and swollen and her eyes puffy. Nita felt vaguely horrible for even thinking that way about her sister, who was at least crying, who was at least _reacting_ to all of this, which was better than what Nita was doing just sitting here thinking about flowers and food and how terrible her sister looked. What was wrong with her?

The bread and cake and vegetables were suddenly churning around horribly in her stomach. Nita got up slowly, enough so that Dairine could get her balance again. "I'm going for a walk," she said distantly, shoving the bouquet under her arm, and took off over the patchy lawn.

They had picnicked on the lawn in the cemetery, and Nita set off across the flat earth towards the headstones in the distance. They looked like teeth coming from the dark earth; clean white teeth, which were brushed on a regular basis. It was easy to get lost in them, staring at the clean lines of crosses and the stooping, sympathetic looking angels. Her mother had a sad-eyed angel with long robes and intricate wings on her headstones, which her mother's side of the family had paid for. The whole overdone mess with the lunch and all the guests was paid for by her mother's family. Poor Daddy, poor _Harry_, forced into a suit and given a glass to hold and sad people he didn't really know to chit-chat with.

Poor all of them. What were they going to do without her?

Her mother's grave was fresh, the earth churned up and dark. Maybe if it was summer there would have been earthworms, coiling and writhing when they were exposed to the air. Now it was just damp, mossy-smelling dirt. Nita crouched down by the line between undisturbed earth and _grave_ and watched the hyacinth petals drift down.

Shoes appeared.

It was like a dream. Shiny black office shoes, the kind really rich people wear, the kind who can spend a king's ransom on shoes. Funeral shoes. They were kicked at the dirt, printing deep random patterns into the earth.

Nita looked at them for about three seconds, and then she backed up.

He offered her sprays of flowers (red astilbe, really beautiful ones, the kind that won contests), and the most terrible smile in the world. He looked very neat, very gentlemanly: the red hair brushed down, feathers of it curling at the nape of His neck and around His ears. It seemed almost obscenely bright in the grey spring day. You would never have guessed that He had killed thousands, by His own hands and through more indirect means.

"Greetings," He said. "I hoped that I would find a chance to speak with you alone. How are you enjoying the funeral?"

It was sickening. It was too much. Nita backed away, having trouble breathing. It didn't seem to help. "Get out of here," she said, hardly feeling her lips move, forgetting politeness. "You have no… no business being here. This isn't your business at all."

"You forget," He said mildly. "Death _is_ My business. Your mother, in the end, was just one of many who came under Me. I hope that this won't prejudice you needlessly against Me- I would still be pleased to have your cooperation in many aspects of My work."

This had to be some kind of sick joke. Nita's nails bit through the soft skin of her palms. "If You think, that after You killed my _mother_, that I'd ever have anything to _do_ with You, then You must be going some kind of crazy-"

He looked regretful and rather indulgent- an adult, humoring a recalcitrant and stubborn child. It was a terrible expression, patently false, very well-rehearsed. "Of course if you feel that way," He said, "then it's no business of _Mine_ forcing you into it…"

She laughed like someone crazy. "Not _forcing_? Is that what you call it? Threatening my- my _mother_- if I wouldn't join you or give up? That's isn't even a choice at _all_!"

"Oh, I assure you," He replied, "I never force anyone. The strongest vessels are the ones who are willing- and eventually, all wizards will come to Me willing."

The Lone Power sighed, regretful, at her still-shaking head. "I see you still require more time to think things over. Well, that's no issue to me, I suppose… I have all the time in the world. When it comes to the quick of it, you have very little." He knelt and put the flowers on her mother's grave. "Those are yours, if you care to accept them. If you ever find yourself in despair, then feel free to call My name. Of course I will come for such a charming maiden." Delivered sincerely, no hint of sarcasm, but his promises were as hollow as empty sea shells.

Nita turned and stormed back towards the group, towards the marginal safety of numbers. Blood was beating about and thrashing all through her body- she could feel heat beaming from her palms and face. Halfway there she stopped behind another gravestone, feeling her throat seem to wobble and expand. It was all so tortuously unfair. After a few minutes she vomited, thick and steaming in the chilly air- it felt like a curse, a blemish on the world. It wouldn't disappear from her mind.

END

September 4, 2005

Written for the myriadwords challengefic community on livejournal. The challenge was flowers for the dead, and it's not a focus but it's there, I guess. For this challenge I looked up flower meanings a little. Purple Hyacinths specifically mean _please forgive me_ (picture: www. /tutorials /tube/ hyacinthpurple.jpg). Astilbe mean _I'll still be waiting_ (picture: www .funboplantskola. se/ perbild/ astilbe.jpg). The fic itself is extraordinarily unlikely, but... I had fun I guess? I dunno.


	7. The Reclamation ::WAW spoilers::

I.

_I may walk far_, the sentence read, _but I do not walk alone; though I move through the far reaches I do not go unattended. For love is at my left shoulder, and fortitude at my right; and the sun has my heart, and the powers my eyes, and the dark places and the pitiless places hold nothing for me to fear – _

II.

This is why the Powers love humans, in spite of our many foibles: where an angel fears to tread a human will blunder in, pushing buttons and pulling levers and saying "What are all these sharp things for? What happens if I push this switch? What do those things do when they mix up? Why are you lot all hiding under the table?"

In the case of one Dairine Callahan, this was especially true.

Not that people called her reckless (At least not to her face). Not that some people thought of her as totally batshit _insane_, dude, what a little freak, she'll punch you in the face if you even _think_ about making a joke about her mom, or even saying anything about it –

Or at least, if they thought that, they kept it very quiet.

So. It was more like…

She plunged into things. She was a focused and laserlike genius. Nothing, nothing at _all_, got into her way and had much time to think about getting out of it because. Because. _Hey._ Stop Dairine from doing something she believed in? Maybe you should just jump in front of a freight train instead. It would probably be quicker and less painful.

III.

_Sea_, the sun was a _sea_; a red-hot sea where slender flaming creatures gamboled and leaped up in high curls and looked at space with superheated diamond eyes and then plunged back into the fire. The sun was a thrashing hot wild wild wild deep place full of secrets and strangeness and a soul bigger than the _world, _where gold-frond trees grew and blew out in seconds and the ground was hot as a frying pan so standing on it you'd dance as the soles of your feet blistered and popped and where you'd find hot searing food and hot wine that burned down to your stomach and set your mind aflame and where you'd find a garden full of wobbling bright-burning flowers that when you picked you'd find crisping your palm to dust and dust and dust and ash –

IV.

"Are you going to Wellakh this weekend?" Nita asked, leaning against the doorframe. Dairine brushed her thick red hair behind her shoulder and looked up from the watercolor she was working on.

"I was thinking about it," she said. "Why?"

Nita made a slow wry smile. "Homework?" she asked. Dairine puffed out an exasperated breath.

"I'm gonna _take_ it. Besides, I don't have much."

"Okay, okay," her older sister said mildly. "I guess we don't have to worry about you for lunch on Saturday. That's all I wanted to know. How are your lessons going, anyway?"

The younger wizard splashed her paintbrush into the murky glass of water set by her paper with slightly more violence than was strictly necessary. "It's slow," she bit out. "It's _hard_, Nita. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I don't know _why_ it's so hard either. I don't know if it's because the sun's so big, or if I just can't do it… at this rate, I'm _never_ going to find him."

Nita walked in and settled herself on Dairine's bed, which creaked slightly. "Dari," she said softly, "don't get to wrangled up about this, okay? Sometimes things come slowly."

Dairine took her brush and rolled it in the pat of red pigment. She painted one long crimson swipe across her painting – an abstract nonobjective piece, a wild and fiery jumble of reds and oranges and yellows. The splash of brightness she'd added fuzzed out and away into the water.

"I talked to a star myself, once," Nita murmured quietly. If Dairine had looked her older sister's expression would have looked remote as another star, thinking of something else entirely. "It's not hard if you look at it the right way. Look, if I can do it you can, Dair."

Far above, the moon was beginning to unveil her pale face – gently.

V.

_She walked barefoot across the hot whispering grasses, soft and ticklish on her tender feet. When she reached the sand her soles began to blister, and the blisters burst and began to bleed, so the cuts on her feet filled with grit – red footprints were left, and when she turned and glanced behind roses were rising with glacial slowness from the barren landscape._

"_I am looking for an old friend of mine," she said to the one springing up in her last footprint. "Can you help me? Do you know his name?"_

"_I am newly-brought into this world," the rose replied, in the soft leaf-whisper petal-rustle of the plant talk. "I know nothing of what you're looking for, or where you're going, or anyone adrift that you're searching for."_

"_How do you grow here?" the girl asked, somewhat irritated at the flower's unhelpfulness. "Maybe you didn't notice, but you're in a DESERT. It's hot. It's dry. Don't you need water and nutrients and stuff?"_

"_Deep down below, there is water," the rose told her. "The ground is full of ash and old memory – it is food enough. The planet remembers what has gone by."_

"_Does the planet know where I can find who I'm looking for?" she asked._

"_The stars might. The stars see everything that walks round and round and back and forth upon this earth."_

_The girl stood up. She looked up and stretched, stretched to stand on her very tippy-toes. "ROSHAUN!" she screamed – "ARE YOU HERE?"_

_Are you even anywhere near?_

VI.

The subsidized gate left to her did not whirl through the dark – it was more like a flash of night, an extended blink. Dairine closed her eyes at home and opened them again in the studied opulence of Wellakh. Jewels glinted in the corners like small-creature eyes.

Dairine shifted her backpack to one shoulder and walked through the room without looking at anything.

VII.

She hadn't talked to anything that wanted to _eat_ her before. Maybe that was the problem – Nita talked to all sorts of dark and strange and twisted things and came out of them with _deep_ behind her eyes and in her head. Nita slid her body along the huge flanks of sharks – Nita laid back in the belly of a strict rumbling predator and let it carry her where she wanted to go. Maybe she was more accustomed to talking to the oh-so-_big_ things, the dangerous things, the things that could move an inch and crush somebody flat without even noticing. Dairine, on the other hand, blundered and shoved her way into things and went blustering out like a miniature tornado. Maybe Nita had just learned to listen better. You probably got good at that talking to trees, right?

The sun – the SUN – the beating feeling of pressure all around her, on her face, on her eyes. Dairine rolled away in her protected little bubble and covered her face with her hands. Heat pulsed along the backs of her hands.

_Boom, boom, boom – _it was like a heartbeat, a massive pulse, waves on the shore, or heavy bass at a concert: bass so heavy that you couldn't see or feel anything else. Only feel all the bones in you aquiver. Only feel the air in your lungs vibrating.

_Hello, HELLO, _she shouted in her mind and with her voice. The little words got tumbled in and lost in all the head noise, the thrashing beat of the living fire. _HELLO? HELLO?_

Even just the greetings take hours – it feels fast but the sun speaks in a big, steady, slow rhythm, for all that it lives superquickly. Maybe understanding is starting to seep in, in between the thump-thumping. Maybe it's in the head.

**.. ….. HHHEHHHHH**

**...HH…… HELLO**

**CARBON-BASED … … .. .**

**HHHEHHHEHHLLOOOO**

**WWZZZZARRRRRD**

…

VIII.

_She dreamed of sitting in the deep garden, holding a sunflower in her hands. The gold of the petals matching the jewel she wore on her breast – the one that had turned, pale gold, rich gold, to pale again. Someone's hair fell over her shoulders in wheat-colored cascades._

"_You're so annoying," he told her, in a crisp precise voice. He put a spin on his words, a bit of an edge; and she was so entirely glad to hear him and so entirely happy that she wasn't even offended. "You're shouting all the time. I'm all right, you know. I'll be back when it suits me."_

_She could feel them sharing weight, leaning back-to-back, his shoulder blades rising up like wings. "RoSHAUN," she said tightly. "You can't just leave off like this. You can't just go away for awhile. The planet doesn't quit turning, you idiot –"_

_He shifted his weight. One thick strand of white-blonde hair pulled away from where it lay across her breast. "Turning, not turning?" he said airily. "For Wellakh, for Earth… what does it matter?"_

"_Okay," she returned. "Okay, okay, so maybe for Wellakh it doesn't – but it DOES, Roshaun, the planet still needs to turn for day and night, even if one side is dead –"_

"_You don't understand," he said haughtily. She felt his weight leave her and stumbled backwards slightly._

"_Roshaun," she said desperately. "ROSHAUN. I don't need to understand this! Just because you want the planet to stop doesn't mean it WILL –"_

_He was walking away. She could hear his footsteps brushing light as mothwings across the grass, and she whirled and saw his slender too-tall form with his hair longer than any girl's down to the butt flaring out behind him and she ran for him, ran like a desperate predator, a spurned lover, a wizard, not like a GIRL, and she reached for his shoulder – _

And woke up.

Her nose had been bleeding in the night – the tang of copper was on her tongue. Her pillow smelled of smoke and regret.

IX.

"Dreams?" Nita asked her, thumping the cover to her manual down. "Like, lucid dreaming or just normal dreams with stuff from wizardry and people you know in them?"

"I don't know," Dairine snapped back, raking her fingers through her tangly hair and scratching savagely at the scalp. "I don't _know_. They don't seem to make sense, but it feels like I'm totally in control of what's going on. Nothing that _he_ says ever makes any sense. None of my arguments ever work. Nita, I don't know how much longer I can _do _this –"

Her sister stopped her in the middle of the kitchen, and hugged her gently. Dairine closed her eyes against the cotton t-shirt Nita wore and breathed in her sister's smell: the chocolate she was snacking on, dust, _Nita_-essence or whatever you wanted to call it. Good smell. Home smell.

"There's probably something in the manual," Nita murmured. "I'm sure you could look it up. Of course, who knows how helpful the manual would be in a situation like this? It sounds like some kind of personal thing. Hey, maybe it's something unique to you."

Dairine pulled herself out of the hug and blinked hard. Once. Twice. Got a grip. "What would you do, Neets?" she asked.

Her older sister turned away thoughtfully and pulled open the fridge. She seemed to contemplate the pitcher of fresh-mixed lemonade but there was no focus in her eyes. "What would I do?" she asked. "Hold on a second here. I want to savor this moment of you asking me for advice."

"_Niiiii_ta…"

"Okay," Nita said, smirking slightly. "I guess what I'd do is, I'd try to take control of the situation there earlier. I'd try to see if I could get deeper into the dream."

X.

…**HHH… H. H. H.**

**HELLO**

**HELLO WIZARD**

_Hello_

_Hello, hello, hello, Sun, hello, hello_

**HELLO**

**I HAVE HEARD YOU**

**I HAVE HEARD YOU OF LATE, SEEKING CONVERSATION WITH ME – **

**I DO NOT OFTEN HEAR THE VOICES OF THOSE WHO ARE NOT THE RULERS.**

_Sorry – I'm sorry if it bothers you – only the Prince, he died, or he went away, a while ago, and the jewel was left to me. So I have to learn to use it now. I'm sorry…_

**THE PRINCE…**

**I FELT HIS PASSING**

**THE WELLAKH RULERS – THEY DO NOT DIE. A WELLAKH GOES NOVA – A WELLAKH GOES INTO ME. I HAVE NOT RECEIVED THIS ONE.**

**BUT**

**IF HE IS GONE**

**THEN I WISH HIM FOUND – **

**BECAUSE CONVERSATION IS NOT SUCH A BURDEN.**

**I WISH THE GUARONTOR-INHERITOR FOUND.**

XI.

_She dreamed_

_Again_

_of sitting in the deep garden, holding a sunflower in her hands. _

_The gold of the petals _

_matching the jewel she wore on her breast – the one that had turned_

_pale gold, rich gold, to pale again. _

_Someone's hair fell over her shoulders in wheat-colored cascades._

"_You're so annoying," he told her,_

_in a voice of mild affection. And it made her glad. It reminded her, at the end, that maybe they'd been friends – even if they'd fought sometimes – they'd been friends._

_She could feel them sharing weight, leaning back-to-back, his shoulder blades rising up like wings. "I've been looking for you," she said in a voice of dry pain. Her throat was as parched as the Sahara. "Your parents are worried. Your sun misses you."_

_He shifted his weight. One thick strand of white-blonde hair pulled away from where it lay across her breast. "The sun…" he said softly. "The sun has known me for a long time. The sun knows every new guarantor from the day we are born."_

"_Will you come back?" she asked him. "Please, Roshaun." And it hurt so much to beg, but she was desperate, and hoped he wouldn't throw that away… "Please. The planet needs you. I –" – and this was the kind of thing that made talking painful – "I need you. Nita has a partner, a best friend – what about ME?"_

"_Childish," he said, with dry playfulness. "But sincere. Still. This is a peaceful place. I am glad to be close to the Sun. And coming back would be difficult…"_

_She turned about, there and then, and there he was: Prince Unlikely, sitting and looking lovely, cupping a sunflower of his own in one long-fingered hand. "That doesn't mean anything!" she said, and was mad at him – all of a sudden, it was eating her up. "Life is hard for EVERYBODY, Roshaun, and you sure didn't get the toughest cut of the meat! At least if you can come back you can say you TRIED, and didn't just give it up FOREVER!"_

_And she was going to go on when he turned his eyes up, dark holes cut into space, and smiled at her gently._

_She reached down and took his hand, and he stood with her._

_The Sun was shining golden from inside his heart._

END

11/6/05


	8. JoanneNita, prefemslash

High school: vast, savage, like the savanna, with watering holes and scorching sun. It's better to be a lion than a gazelle. Gazelles get their bones crunched and the marrow licked out. Lions have their prides, and their pride. Joanne is a lion.

Still, the savanna has its gossip, right? Neutral ground, where rumors get passed on. Which is how Joanne knows that Nita's newest outfit is totally salvaged from the thrift store, and how she and Kit are still not officially going out, and have not done it yet either. Speculation that both of them are gay periodically rises up and recedes. And Joanne, she listens.

It's here, naturally, where the news of Nita's mom comes up.

…

That's an unnatural article, to be bandied about while girls apply eye shadow, retouch their lipstick. It's too serious for washroom chat. Lisa gliding the mascara wand over her spiky lashes and going "Yeah, I hear her mom's been in the hospital for like three days now, and Callahan's still coming to school, it's a little weird, y'know?"

And of course Joanne knows. If you keep an eye on Nita, not in a freaky stalker kind of way or anything… she just really is kind of weird.

Like, when she was little that strangeness blared, and as a public service Joanne had to smush it down. And now, well. Nita Callahan is different, and still kind of weird, and Joanne feels like a watch should be kept, is all.

Which still does not explain why Joanne has this sudden powerful desire to pry Callahan's dry hands off the beat-up book she's strangling, and look her in the eye. It goes in waves, Nita afraid of Joanne for years even if that never stopped her going against her, the upward swoop into confidence, bravery, and now this distracted arch into solitary terror again. The elephant in the living room is that now, it's not a person Nita's afraid of: it's just the approaching inevitability. The empty hole in a family, the slow decline, death.

Like it'll save her mom, reading that book in time, yeah right. Like the book but nothing else matters.

So, Joanne doesn't talk to her at lunch, or anything like that. Her friends would shrivel up and blow away if they saw her interact with the terminally uncool Wah-nita Callahan. The library is the place to have covert meetings with a social reject, so! The library it is. Callahan has a table staked out and is devouring that book, with a bruised look in her dark eyes. Joanne sets her purse on a chair and sits down on the other side of the table, ignoring the double-takes other kids shoot in her direction. She's Joanne, she can do what she wants.

Callahan does not look up from the book, but her fingers flex on the cover. Joanne taps her fingernails against the table, which is scarred from who-knows-how-many years of smoldering kids digging at it with pencil points or smuggled knives. In this table the initials JMC are carved, boxy letters declaring that MRS LAPTON SUX, and in graphite the light clumsy tracings of a girl's spread legs with a lozenge vagina shape in between. Joanne wrinkles her nose and looks away. "Hey."

Nita's eyes flick in her direction, and then back down to the pages. Not fear; it's been years (and Joanne still grits her teeth sometimes, thinking about it) since Nita's been scared of Joanne. It's just the aforementioned distraction. Besides, the girl's got a little muscle now; when she wears tank tops biceps are discernible, and a steady strength in her shoulders. In skirts, she has legs like a runner's. Quadriceps slightly defined on the thigh, calves round with muscle. If they got in a fistfight now Callahan might have a chance, although judging by the last time…

Maybe approaching Callahan was a bad idea. Joanne's the one who's really left open here, to be snubbed. Nita looks like a corpse under the fluorescent lights. Deader then her mom probably is right now. Her eyes shuttered, exhausted, Nita looks back up and says "Hi."

Pause.

"Where's your boy-toy?" Joanne asks, for lack of anything better, and the ice has to break somehow, right? Callahan pinches the bridge of her nose between her eyes and rubs, hard. She looks drowned is what, Joanne realizes. Swollen, pale, with almost colorless lips. Drained.

"He has a different lunch," Nita says without intonation. Her eyes slip compulsively back down to the book and, oh, she's dismissing Joanne now. This is a tacit request that Joanne please go away. "We're not always together, you know."

Because she's actually, truly not here to start a(nother) feud, Joanne says "Right. Okay. Hey, you know, I heard about your mom… hey." Callahan has already zeroed back in on the stupid book. Couple years ago she'd been a dog, doofy, not knowing when _not_ to be friendly. Now she just shuts Joanne out?

This is hard enough already, trying to reach someone so strange.

" _Hey_," Joanne repeats, reaching across the table and making a grab for the book's ragged cover. It's embarrassing, trying to be nice and getting shot down like this (nobody should ignore her!). She's going out of her way to check up on an old acquaintance, here. She deserves some props at least.

The book cover, when she touches it, doesn't feel at all like a proper book – is it scales or slime or just some sense of infinite depth she's dabbling her fingers in? But it comes out of Callahan's hands and skitters on the table like any regular book, and Nita Callahan really _looks_ at her for the first time in this freaking conversation, like the old days when she had an eye out for Joanne all the time, ready to try to fight or run. Nita Callahan stands up fast so her chair slams back and slaps her palm down on the book. Joanne can make out a word in gold paint… _Wizard_.

"What do you _want_?" Callahan actually snaps, agitated, her shoulders pushing forward, burning up with focus now. Joanne stands up herself, keeps pulling the book, so they're fighting for it.

"I don't know," Joanne spits back, completely aggrieved, not using her library voice. "I guess I just heard about your mom and wanted to say, I hope she's better soon? You don't have to be a total aggressive freak about it –"

Callahan pulls hard, and the book goes like oil out of Joanne's hands. She's reading magic books, while her mother dies, and Joanne looks at her, the color that's bloomed in Callahan's face, and how taut she's standing, and…

"Girls!" someone says severely, and Joanne snaps out of it, breaks eye contact first to look at who's interrupted them. Some librarian, she doesn't know them, this isn't her haunt. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Nita glance at her, and then away.

"What are you two up to back here?" the woman asks reprovingly. She is mostly looking at Nita, Joanne realizes. They must be acquaintances at least. "Nita, honey, the school knows you are under a lot of stress, but – but, well – "

Nita's face has begun to acquire a dampened, crushed look, like a bloodied cloth. Her brow furrows, the eyes glitter with moisture, and Joanne, she has to awkwardly look away.

The librarian, it seems, has forgotten her now – she gets out of jail free for this one. Motherly, almost, the older woman takes Callahan away, one soft arm around her shoulders. The two of them disappear into the back office.

People are still staring. The bell is going to ring. Joanne shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortably, and wonders when she'll ever learn to talk.

* * *

_Written for Yuletide 2007, for labellementeuse. Request was Joanne/Nita femmeslash; this is more like preslash, but... ahah._


End file.
